Saida Zunnunova

Saida Zunnunova was born on 15 February 1926 in Andijan, into the family of an office worker. She lost her father early and helped her mother bring up her younger brothers. After secondary school she studied at the Andijan Pedagogical (Teachers’) Institute in 1941–1943, then taught in schools of the region and worked on newspaper staffs.

Her first poem was printed in 1945 by “Paxta fronti”, the Andijan regional newspaper. In 1947–1952 she studied at the Faculty of Philology of the Central Asian State University in Tashkent. As a student she wrote the narrative poems “Sodiq and Anor” (1947) and “Xayrixon” (1949); her first poetry collection, “Your Daughter Has Written”, came out in 1948, followed by “New Poems” (1950).

In November 1949 she married the writer Said Ahmad; their daughter, Nodira, later co-wrote the screenplay of a film about her parents. When Said Ahmad was arrested as an “enemy of the people” in May 1950, the Writers’ Union demanded that Zunnunova renounce him. She refused, was expelled from the Union, and for a time her work went unpublished. She spent those years with her mother-in-law, waiting for her husband’s return, and the couple kept each other informed of their writing by letter. Said Ahmad was released in 1955.

She worked as a literary staff member of the magazine “Gulxan” in 1953–1956 and of the newspaper “O'zbekiston madaniyati” in 1956–1957, as an editor at the fiction publishing house in 1957–1958, and as a literary consultant to the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan in 1962–1967. In 1959 she was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour.

From the 1950s to the 1970s she published the poetry collections “The Valley of Flowers” (1954), “Girls” (1962), “Poems” (1964), “Thoughts of One Year” (1967) and “The Lotus” (1972), and the narrative poems “Conversation with a Portrait” (1966) and “My Neighbours” (1968). The literary scholar Naim Karimov notes that her skill at conveying subtle states of mind shows most clearly in “Conversation with a Portrait”. She also wrote the plays “Mother” (1966) and “Eyes” (1968).

From the mid-1950s she wrote a good deal of prose. The stories and novellas in “Gulbahor” (1956), “The Bonfire”, “The Wing” (1961), “Fire” (1962), “Bright Streets” (1965) and “I Adore You” (1972) deal mostly with work, family and love, and women stand at their centre. The novella “The Bonfire” is about Uzbek women and their struggle in the 1920s. The National Encyclopedia of Uzbekistan points out that in the novellas “The New Director”, “Fire” and “Among People”, under the guise of attacking “survivals of the past”, she also exposed the ills of Soviet society.

Saida Zunnunova died after a serious illness on 20 March 1977 in Tashkent, at the age of 51, and was buried in the Chig'atoy cemetery. On 10 June 2013 a monument to her and Said Ahmad was unveiled on the Alley of Writers in Tashkent. In March 2019 the feature film “Said and Saida”, directed by Nozim Abbosov, about the couple’s life, had its premiere. Streets and schools in Tashkent and Andijan and an academic lyceum in the Bo'z district bear her name. On 28 May 2026 she was posthumously awarded the Order “For Selfless Service” (“Fidokorona xizmatlari uchun”).